When our kids were little, we used to read them books from Roger Hargreaves’ Mr. Men and Little Miss series.

I remember one in particular in which Mr. Grumpy was fulminating about all the things he hates when he is confronted by Mr. Happy who scolds him that he has no right to complain; he must be happy.

In the world of Canada’s dour and undemocratic human rights commissions, Bill Whatcott is Mr. Grumpy and the elitist forces of political correctness lined up against him are, collectively, Mr. Happy. They won’t rest until Whatcott is forced to be “happy” — i.e. politically correct — just like them.

For more than a decade, human rights commissions in various provinces and Ottawa, police forces, Crown prosecutors, gay-rights activists, liberal churches and even his own professional nursing association have tried to use rights inquisitions to shut Whatcott up.

Admittedly, Whatcott is a tough man to like. His socially conservative views against abortion and homosexuality are extreme, even among pro-lifers and opponents of same-sex marriage. In 2010, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal described as “crude, offensive, and pejorative” the brochures he distributes featuring photos of mangled fetuses and claims that gay sex leads to all sorts of disease and depravity.

On top of that, the stridency of his personality often causes even his ideological comrades to abandon him.

But freedom of expression means nothing if it only grants the right for nice people to say nice things. It must protect the right to tell others where to get off even more than it protects the right to respectfully disagree.

Wednesday, the Supreme Court will rule on whether brochures Whatcott distributed in Saskatchewan in 2001 and 2002 violate that province’s human rights code. I suspect the court will decide much of the code is overbroad and too vague to be good law. I doubt, though, the court will come right out and assert that efforts to regulate hate speech are by their nature unconstitutional infringements by governments on free expression.

One way or the other, however, the court’s ruling could have far-reaching implications for rights codes in other provinces. It might even pull the stilts out from under hate-speech provisions in federal law.

Saskatchewan’s rights code — like the codes in Alberta, B.C., the Yukon and N.W.T. — makes it an offence to print, utter or otherwise express any message that “tends to expose to hatred, ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of any person or class of persons.”

The problem with that definition is it gives the alleged victim the power to decide whether a violation has occurred by making the hatred in the ear of the hearer or the eye of the beholder.

So when four gay Saskatchewanians took offence to Whatcott’s graphic pamphlets, it was easy for a provincial human rights tribunal to find him guilty and fine him $17,500.

Thankfully, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal overturned the tribunal’s ruling in 2010. Even though the judges found Whatcott’s brochure crude and offensive, they sensibly held that “debate will sometimes be polemical and impolite.”

The ruling marked at least the third time the appellant court has overturned the Saskatchewan rights board’s attacks on free speech.

Expect the Supreme Court to do something similar — to rule that hate-speech laws and human rights codes must be very tightly written so as to capture only the worst of the worst speech, instead of whatever lefty activists find offensive. But don’t expect the justices to rule that the entire concept of hate speech is bogus.

However, even if the court takes only the smaller step, it will still be a step in the right direction — away from the dictatorship of political correctness.

Pushing ‘happy’ too far: Freedom of expression means nothing if it only allows nice people to say nice things

When our kids were little, we used to read them books from Roger Hargreaves’ Mr. Men and Little Miss series.

I remember one in particular in which Mr. Grumpy was fulminating about all the things he hates when he is confronted by Mr. Happy who scolds him that he has no right to complain; he must be happy.

In the world of Canada’s dour and undemocratic human rights commissions, Bill Whatcott is Mr. Grumpy and the elitist forces of political correctness lined up against him are, collectively, Mr. Happy. They won’t rest until Whatcott is forced to be “happy” — i.e. politically correct — just like them.

For more than a decade, human rights commissions in various provinces and Ottawa, police forces, Crown prosecutors, gay-rights activists, liberal churches and even his own professional nursing association have tried to use rights inquisitions to shut Whatcott up.

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